The Heart Whisperer (35 page)

Richard put one hand up. ‘Whoa! What's going on here?'

‘Sorry. I'm just worried—' she looked at Dog, ‘about your watch, that's all.'

He stood up. ‘Maybe we should just call it a day.' Claire stared at him.

‘I love you,' he said, ‘but I'm just not a dog person.' He picked up his briefcase. ‘I've asked the office handyman to come and fix the pipes on Friday and I'll get him to put a couple of new locks on the doors in the hall while he's here. I'm working late tomorrow but I'll see you Saturday. We're going to a movie with Helen and Andreas, remember?'

Relief washed over her. This was a proper grown-up relationship. It had ups. It had downs. It was going to be fine. He kissed her lightly on the lips. ‘Sorry, Claire. Today was tough. I just need some time out.'

She saw him to the door to the laneway and then walked, in a daze, back into the house and closed the door and leaned on it.

‘Did he just say he loved me?' she asked Dog. His stomach rumbled ominously. ‘Oh no!' Claire reached for her coat. ‘Here we go again.'

While Oonagh was introducing Nick's segment on ‘Five Steps to Overcome Jealousy', Owen pulled off his microphone and wandered, out of shot, over to the kitchen set where a table had been laid with dishes for a Valentine's dinner.

‘Nick, I think we all know, first hand,' Oonagh said, pointedly, ‘how much damage jealousy can do in a relationship.'

‘Absolutely.' Nick had decided that today was the day to be straight with Oonagh. He'd taken an extra painkiller to give him courage but it had just made him feel out of focus. ‘A certain amount of jealousy is normal but, if it gets out of hand, it can lead to increasingly irrational behaviour.' Behind her, he saw Owen tucking into a plate of oysters, while the floor manager tried, in mime, to reason with him.

‘Thanks, Nick, you were great, as always!' Oonagh's bottom lip was wobbling but she did her best to smile for the camera. ‘Coming up after the news, liposuction, the man who wants to breastfeed his baby and an irresistible Valentine's supper.' She waited till the camera stopped rolling then she stood up and fled. Nick caught up with her in the corridor. ‘Oonagh, wait, I need to talk to you—'

She turned and flung herself at him, burying her face in his chest. ‘I know what you're going to say. You're going to say that I have to think of three good things about him or something. But I can't. I'm sick of him, Nick. He's jealous of us! He just can't bear that you're getting this job and he's not.'

He patted her blonde curls. They were stiff and sticky with hairspray. ‘I wasn't going to say that. What I was going to say was that Kelly and I are—'

The floor manager stuck his head round the door. ‘Oonagh, Owen's laying into the Valentine's cocktails. You need to get back in here fast.'

Ash was heading off to London for twenty-four hours. Ray guessed that she was packing up the last bits and pieces to move back to Dublin for good but he didn't want to be nosy. She'd asked him to look after Willow overnight and then deliver her to a fancy dress party.

‘You've got the address?' Ash asked him for the third time on the steps. ‘And the stuff to make the Rice Krispie buns?'

Ray had double-checked that the chocolate was vegan and
picked up a packet of paper chef's hats too. Willow was going to love those. ‘Yeah. You have a plane to catch, remember?'

‘Is Izzy coming?' Willow asked him as soon as Ash left.

‘Nope.' Ray hadn't beaten his four-week record for a relationship. It hadn't been pretty to watch a grown woman trying to compete with a six-year-old. Especially when the six-year-old won. ‘OK, let's get these crispies on the road.'

Willow was at the window. ‘Can we just go down and pat Claire's dog first? Please? If we wash our hands afterwards. He's in the garden.'

Ray was unfolding his chef's hat. ‘With Claire.'

‘No, he's with a man.' Willow pressed her forehead against the window. ‘The dog is going for a walk and the man is throwing money in the bin.'

‘Money?' Ray walked over to the window. Richard, in weekend casuals, was closing the lid of the recycling bin. He wiped his hands carefully on a tissue.

‘Will you promise me something?' Ray asked Willow.

‘It depends.'

‘Will you promise me you'll never trust a man who wears moccasins?'

Claire pushed open the door of Weir's and crossed the thick carpet, past the cabinets of glittering silverware and cases of trophies. An assistant was polishing the countertop with a duster.

‘Can I help you?'

‘I'm looking for a Rolex Submariner,' she said, ‘with a unidirectional thingy and it has to be waterproof.'

Weir's didn't have Richard's watch in stock. They could order one in but Claire couldn't afford to buy it. Dog's little snack had cost five and a half thousand euros. She would have to try to track down a second-hand one on eBay.

There was a missed call from Richard on Claire's phone when she came out of her audition. ‘The dog is missing!' he said when she called him back. ‘The handyman must have left the gate open and he got out.'

Richard had already been to the beach and the playing fields
behind the school looking for Dog but he went back again just to be sure while Claire walked around the park. She asked everyone she met if they'd seen a huge grey dog but nobody had. She should have had him microchipped, she realised, too late, but at least her dad's phone number was on his collar. If someone found him, they'd call his house and Nick would let her know.

‘He'll turn up,' Richard said when they met back at the flat. ‘Now sit down and eat something. I got you a coffee and a muffin.'

‘I'm not hungry. I have to find him. Tell me what happened again.'

He shook his head, helplessly. ‘I got here at about three to let the handyman in. He was fixing the locks in the hall and I was checking my mail on the laptop in the living room and when I went into the kitchen at four Dog was gone. The gate was open when I looked out. The guy went out to get some tools from his van and—'

‘We need to check the pound.' Claire took out her phone.

‘I rang them earlier. Both of the Dublin pounds and four animal rescue places.'

Claire was only half listening. It was dark now and she was trying to block out images of Dog getting knocked down by a car or being tied to another trolley by a gang of kids. She started putting her coat back on. ‘I'll go and check the supermarket car parks.'

‘Now? It's getting kind of late.'

‘I'll do it.'

‘We'll do it together.' Richard stood up. ‘You take Superquinn. I'll take M&S, then we'll meet at Tesco.'

Ray and Willow made a batch of Rice Krispie buns but then they ate most of them and had to make a second batch. Afterwards, Ray dug out a box of stuff from the Smoke Covered Horses days. He upended it on the floor of the living room. Photographs and press clippings in languages he didn't even recognise. Keys to hotel rooms that he'd never returned. Laminates and backstage passes. Labels from bottles of tequila he didn't remember drinking.

‘This is what I wanted to show you,' he said as he found the
picture of himself with David Bowie. It had been taken at a party in Tokyo eight years ago. David had spent an hour talking to Chip and Ray had run after him with a Polaroid camera as he was leaving. He had his arm slung around Bowie's neck and he was giving the camera the peace sign. Bowie looked, he realised now, politely horrified and he looked very, very drunk.

‘Who's that?' Willow asked him.

‘That's the other Bowie.'

‘No.' She pointed her small finger at the other face. ‘Who's he?'

‘That's me!' Ray said, puzzled.

‘You look different.' She looked from the picture to his face and back down again.

‘You mean I look younger?'

Willow thought for a second. ‘No. You look sadder.'

Ray helped Willow change into her pyjamas.

‘We have to brush my teeth and then I have to pray for all the people I love.' She squeezed paste carefully on to her Toy Story toothbrush.

‘How do you know?' Ray asked her. ‘When you love someone?'

‘Your heart goes bump and little stars come out of you.'

‘Like in a cartoon?'

‘Yes. Except it's not funny.' She looked at the toothbrush. ‘This toothpaste smells yellow.'

Ray grabbed the brush from her and sniffed it. Then picked up the toothpaste tube and squinted at it. He held it up to the magnifying mirror. It was Preparation H.

‘Willow! Did you put this in your mouth?' She looked scared. ‘It's OK. It's just not for teeth, that's all.'

She shook her head. ‘What's it for, then?'

Ray dropped the tube into the bin.

‘It's for idiots.'

He should have bought Willow an apron, he thought, folding her clothes after she had finally gone to sleep. Her jeans were covered in patches of dried chocolate but she'd be wearing her fancy dress costume tomorrow, so he guessed it didn't matter.

He went over to the bed to turn the lamp off and he stood, with
his hand on the switch, looking down at her small, dark head on the pillow. Then he went back into the kitchen and ripped open the Rice Krispie packet and began to scribble down the words of something that he thought might be a song.

Willow's costume was a white ballet tutu with pink tights and a tiara which she insisted on wearing with her tiny trainers. The party was only a few streets away so they decided to walk. Halfway there, she needed to pee, so Ray went into a hairdresser's and asked the girl on reception if they could use their loo.

‘Of course!' She smiled at Willow in her coat and tiara. ‘Do you want me to take you, Your Majesty?'

‘I'm not a real princess,' Willow said, shyly. ‘This is just my funsy dress.'

There was a collective ‘aaah' from the women at the basins.

Ray waited outside holding Willow's sparkly pink wheelie case and the Tupperware box of Rice Krispie buns; he heard someone calling his name and, when he looked up, Chip Connolly was crossing the road, his small face curled into an angry snarl.

‘You stole my fucking song, you cheap shit!' He grabbed Ray's arm. ‘For a fucking bagel advert.' And before Ray could say ‘sorry', before he could say anything, Chip punched him hard in the face.

Ray's mouth filled with the metallic taste of blood. He slid down the wall and put his head between his knees. He could hear the angry squeak of Chip's trainers as he strode away.

‘Oh my God!' The receptionist was standing in the doorway of the salon holding Willow by the hand. ‘Are you OK?'

‘Yeah.' Ray got unsteadily to his feet. There was a line of shocked faces at the window.

‘Come inside,' the receptionist was saying. ‘I'll call the police.'

‘No!' It was pointless and Willow would miss the party. He took her hand. His own hand, he saw too late, was covered in blood. She looked at him and her bottom lip began to wobble.

‘It's just a little nose bleed,' he told her. ‘You can still go to the party. We've still got the crispies.' He crouched down beside her. ‘It's OK.'

He had to pick her up and carry her in the end. Two taxis
slowed down and took off when they saw the blood on his face but a third stopped.

‘I don't want to go to the party now. I want to go home,' Willow whispered. She shrank against the door when he tried to comfort her but she let him carry her up the driveway, bumping the pink suitcase behind him. They had lost the Rice Krispie buns somewhere along the way.

He was expecting to have to explain what happened to his face to Willow's grandmother, but it was Ash who opened the door. ‘I thought you were in London,' he stammered.

Her shocked eyes took in the blood on his clothes. ‘Ray! What happened. Is Willow hurt?'

‘She's fine. It's my blood.' He passed Willow to Ash. Her tutu was splattered with red-brown stains and her pink tights had dark streaks. She was crying, softly.

‘It's OK, sweetheart.' Ash wrapped her arms around her. ‘It's OK.'

‘What's going on?' A man appeared behind her and Ray almost fell over. It was Maurice DeVeau, standing in the hallway of a semi-d in Killiney.

‘Daddy!' Willow stretched her arms out to him.

Ash was pale. ‘Maurice, can you deal with this?' She carried Willow into the house.

‘What happened, man?' Maurice ran a hand through his famous mane of blond hair.

‘Guy came out of nowhere and punched me,' Ray said in a shaky voice, ‘a guy from my old band, Smoke Covered Horses.'

Maurice DeVeau nodded. Did that mean he knew the band, Ray wondered, or that he understood that someone had punched him?

‘You want to come in and get cleaned up?'

Ray did want to go in. He wanted to be with Willow, to make sure that she really was all right. But that might upset her more. ‘I'd better head home.'

‘OK.'

He put his hand on the door just as Maurice was closing it. ‘I'm a huge fan of your work,' he babbled. ‘I thought
Only You, Only Me
was an incredible album and—'

‘Daddy!' He heard Willow crying in a distant room and he stopped himself.

‘You take care, man,' Maurice DeVeau said in his soft Canadian accent, ‘and keep it real.'

‘You too,' Ray said to the closing door.

It was still dark outside when Richard finished getting dressed. He was taking the red-eye to London to present the virals to twenty international brand managers.

‘Are you sure you don't want me to cancel?' He sat on the bed.

‘No, it's OK.'

‘I'll be back tonight. I'm sure Dog will have turned up by then.'

After he was gone, Claire got up and drove around the supermarket car parks again. Then walked through the park. There was nobody around. It had rained in the night and the bushes by the path were drenched. She checked behind every one of them in case Dog was sheltering there. He hated the rain.